Can haters or super fans really influence the perception of a particular anime in the community?

The only people they can influence are those who base their taste off popular opinion. "Oh everyone says this show is mid so it must be mid I can't be watching that other people in the community won't like me brrrrrrrr."

I don't think I've interacted with someone who's genuinely true to their personal taste that cares about fans and haters.

Superfans and haters honestly are a two way conduit.

As someone old, there's been a lot of hardcore "old school" overseas/western/USA fan devotees who inhabit the internet incessantly and whine and stew in their own self pity about how they aren't cool anymore, before they make blogs and sites devoted to their insanity and try to turn other people into miserable bitter piles of filth like them. And this has happened a lot longer than you think. During the 1990s boom, there were the hardcore Gundam and 80s masterpiece purists. During the 2000s, we had the "manime and elite masterpiece of works than shonenslop" purists. During the 2010s, we had the "total moe death" purists. Right now, we're experiencing the "anime is too lewd and violent and not PC so make it like Studio Ghilbi so I can be accepted by Hollywood and make Japan like the USA/anime is becoming too woke death to trannies Japan is a white nation" purists.

Shoot, Zac Bertschy helped to influence an entire generation of anime elitists on Anime News Network. I don't care what condolences he has, he was honestly a piece of work with a lot of baggage and a lot of problems and a bully at that.

So yeah, they do have presence online and they do ruin some unsuspecting fan's life by making them as bitter and deluded as them. Treat the internet as you would outside and keep the fuck away from strangers.

@HokutoMumyoZan On the contrary, it seemed to me that ANN was closer to the "modern audience" and modern trends. At least when I was active there in the second half of the 10s and you could quickly get pre-moderation if your opinion was more critical than that of the average person on the site.

The only instance I know of is shippers deceive people into thinking that a bunch of "they are just friends" shows are yuri.
Opinions are easy to dismiss, but factually wrong information can fool people who didn't watch it.

@JaniSIr Hah, there are also opposite things. When you personally, albeit subjectively, think that the title is unambiguously BL or yuri, but no one on social media talks about it. Although, unlike the first, this is usually caused by the obscureness of the title. I am more surprised by situations like my introduction to Showa Rakugo, when many people directly sold me this show as "powerful BL bait with bisexual male characters" and in the end I was very surprised when it turned out to be a story with a very obvious heterosexual love triangle.

@HokutoMumyoZan I didn't interact with him much directly, or at least I didn't notice it. But I "managed" to get to the site at a time when they would write an article about PreCure based on a random fan post on Twitter, or when in a review of the premiere of that show about female cops, the reviewer wrote "ACAB" in the end and accused the show of "police propaganda" because the story showed the daily lives and struggles of Japanese police officers. Then the infamous "Shield Hero controversy" shit started and I just stopped going there much so as not to bait myself.

@Komitoza I didn't just mean the impact on assessment of the overall quality of work, but also the creation of some specific atmosphere, if you know what I mean. Like when people avoided MHA because of fandom shipping wars or created some specific ideas about JoJo because of internet memes.

I hope I did my best to be transparent than most. You did a good thing by keeping away from ANN when staff began to really think they were bigger than their britches and thought to exert all of their influence (they still are, now that I think about it, even under the ownership of Kodansha) out on even the anime and manga industry. Anime News Network staff really ought to take to heart "touching grass" and expressing their frustrations with problems that are actually happening in their own communities and learning a lot more about their own backyard, but then again, it may likely not appease their US entertainment empire overlords and "hardcore oldschool" audience.

Don't worry about meeting or encountering him. He was a very toxic individual.

@HokutoMumyoZan At one point, one of ANN's editors told me that Zach "expectedly" staffed the site with people who shared his views completely, so I always took that for granted. But I never understood when some of the editors there criticized the show for ignoring American political and social trends. I mean, in plain text. It's just weird.

@Komitoza So you're saying that when some people became MHA haters because they hated the fans of the show and even absurdly blamed the fans for what they didn't like about the show, that was something natural?

Oh yeah, Zac definitely desired an inner circle that was almost cabalistic and consisted of yes men of similar mindsets as him. If I recall, Bamboo Dong, a Chinese American ANN head, left because she had enough of their casual racist and sexist conversations. This little inner circle thing however ultimately became his bane down the line, which snowballed into something very big that I won't get into.

And their strange behavior of projecting their social and national problems on to anime really is weird. It's honestly like a subconscious expression of their insanity, want, or combined desires of wanting anime to appease to them only. That or they think that playing the politics game will make them popular. I really appreciate great journalism, but if anything that's just new yellow journalism at work.

Sure they can.

Look at SAO.
Before someone told most people that it's shit, it was talked about like it was the best Anime ever made.

@Merve2Love Are you implying that it is objectively bad, or that hating it is as much of a collective thing as past love?

@RobertBobert

Im saying most people loved it, when it came out, until hating it became the cool thing to do.


Hating it definetly became a collective and "right" stance to have. It was popular to trash it.
And that wasn't people watching it and then picking it apart. That was "Haters" or whatever influencing people.

I dropped ReZero around episode 21, was going to give it a 2nd chance until I saw Okeanix schizo posting about Frieren's success. I'm now under the impression that ReZero is one of the worst shows of all time.

@RobertBobert I feel like we've deviated from the original topic.

I haven't really read up on that theory tbh, I don't dig too deep into that stuff since it's not important to my watching experience. People tend to forget Japanese mangaka don't usually have the Western "now how can I pitch it to Netflix" attitude. Idk. Seems all very tin foil hat to me.

Yes. This is a thing.

Fans side: the BKDK shippers in MHA and the Griffith apologists in Berserk turned a lot of people off.

Hater side: Black Clover is a great example. The comparisons to Naruto and the allegations that it was a Naruto rip off turned viewers and readers off. When they actually read the manga, they like it.

@LuxuriousHeart Sometimes it seems to me that any more or less good deep work has a part of fans who will unironically defend and justify the main villain. Starting from the most simple examples where people sincerely did not understand that Lelouch and Light were not meant as role models and ending with people who considered Eren a sinless idol.

To answer your quote, people who call a show woke just because it has at least some political or leftist element are no better than people who think anime can't talk about the daily struggles of female cops due to police abolition in the US.

@LuxuriousHeart It means they're usually not a sellout.

@Komitoza Again, what does that mean? How would you be a sell out, just because you put your show on Netflix?

Sword Art Online is probably the most notable example of an anime wherein its reputation was shaped by haters. YouTube channels such as Digibro and Mother's Basement gave the strong impression that Sword Art Online is the worst anime of all time.